DEMOCRATS' RIFT ON COAST COSTLY

LOS ANGELES, March 14—Bitterness erupted among Cali­fornia Democratic leaders this week to an extent that some observers could foresee bearing critically on the party's fortunes in next November's election.

California has a second‐rank­ing bloc of 40 electoral votes. In the 1960 Presidential contest, the state went for its “favorite son,” Richard M. Nixon, by the narrowest of margins.

President Johnson has shown up strongly in recent opinion polls, scoring as much as 70 per cent in “trial heats” against leading Republican possibilities.

But this promising outlook for the Democrats could be shattered by intraparty frictions over the United States Senate seat occupied by Clair Engle, the once‐dynamic Democrat now recovering from a brain tumor operation.

The week started on one aus­picious note for the Democrats when San Francisco's former Mayor, George Christopher, an­nounced his decision not to run for the Senate. He was perhaps the most formidable opponent the Republicans might have nominated

The two principal Republican entries—with the filing deadline next Friday—are George Mur­phy, a Hollywood executive and former actor, and Leland Kaiser, a San Francisco financier.

Simultaneously, however, Mr. Engle himself — whom party leaders had written off as un­able to campaign—unleashed a blast that gathered unexpected support

in a prepared statement from Washington, he accused Gov. Edmund G. Brown of “trying to bury me” by swinging his support to the other major Democratic aspirant, State Con­troller Alan Cranston.

Brown Is Denounced

The Senator, as adherents here proceeded to organize his re‐election campaign, denounced the Governor's asserted disloy­alty so bitterly that Governor Brown said he could not believe the Senator himself had uttered the words.

But the denunciation was quickly seconded as “entirely justified” by a figure of some party stature, former Postmas­ter General Edward Day. who now practiccs law in Washing­ton

The chorus Was then taken up by one of the party's stormiest petrels, Mayor Samuel Yorty of Los Angeles, a former Con­gressman. Mayor Yorty said he was considering entering the June 2 primary contest himself to oppose Mr. Cranston.

Most Declines Race

Meanwhile, the May nr nlade an eleventh‐hour effort to re­vive a deflated anti‐Cranston candidacy, that of Attorney General Stanley Mosk. Mr. Mosk, California's Democratic National Committeeman, for­mally bowed out of the Sena­torial competition last month under pressure by Governor Brown in the name of party harmony.

Despite the Yorty overtures, however, Mr. Mosk reaffirmed on Friday his decision to stay out of the race.

The opposition that has sud­clenly welled up to the replace­ment of Senator Engle never­the less presaged a possibly tran­matic primary struggle among the Democrats.

California has a million more nominal Democrats than Repub­licans. But it is an axiom in California politics the elector­ate of seven million being so fluid in its loyalties — that a

Factional fights kept the Democrats out of power in the state during most of the 25 years down to 1958—when Mr. Brown was elected —even though they had a bigger regis­tration than the Republicans.

Some observers see a possible resurgence of such costly fac tionaiism, with the Senate‐race quarreling the symptom rather than the ailment.

Mr. Brown's “pulling the rug out” from under Attorney Gen­eral Mosk's candidacy was viewed by many Democrats as “poetic justice” of a sort.

They recall that in 1960 Paul

The nipping of Mr. Mosk's senatorial candidacy is assessed by some well‐placed party an­alysts as a Brown “power play” that yielded a dual dividend for it also crimped the influence of Mr. Mosk's principal supporter, State Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh.